1. Technical Field of the Invention
This invention pertains to a workflow, enterprise, and mail-enabled web application enhanced for distributed computing and remote execution.
2. Background Art
Lotus Notes (TM) is a workflow enterprise and mail enabled application server and platform.
The Lotus Development Corporation Domino (TM) server is an enhancement to Notes to add web capabilities. Thus, Domino is a workflow enterprise and mail enabled web application server and platform. There is a need in the art to enhance the Domino server and platform to allow distributed computing and remote execution of Domino web applications.
The Lotus Development Corporation QuickPlace (TM) server is an enhancement to Domino. It is a workflow, enterprise and mail-enabled web application server and environment for rapid creation of collaborative user communities. There is a need in the art to enhance this server and platform to allow distributed computing and remote execution of QuickPlace applications.
The Microsoft Exchange (TM) server is a mail enabled application server and platform. This does not support workflow, nor scale easily to an enterprise level. Novel's GroupWise (TM) server is a workflow enabled enterprise server and platform. This does not support mail, nor scale easily to an enterprise level. There is a need in the art for a mail and workflow web application server and environment which supports mail and scales easily and well to the enterprise level, which requires that all software elements need to scale to very large applications with respect to performance, loading, and administration tools.
Heretofore, replication of databases has been provided one at a time, or serially through a list of a plurality of databases. This may be optimum when all of the databases of interest are being replicated from a single server, or if there is a single CPU machine on the client and on the server. However, such may not provide optimum performance when it is desired to replicate to two data bases on the client machine, each from a different server. In this latter case, the performance limitation may not be the CPUs of the machines, but the bandwidth of the connection to the network.
Heretofore in the art, when replicating to subscriptions containing different data, data could be contaminated.
There is a need in the art to provide for unattended concurrent replication to a client machine of a plurality of subscriptions.
There is a need in the art to provide for replication to a single client of a plurality of subscriptions of different users having databases in common.
In the QuickPlace server there exists a mechanism by which Notes ID's are auto-generated on the server and shipped down across the communication link to a client during the client set-up time. There was one and only one way to get the Notes ID that is necessary for use during replication processes.
Additionally, in this prior art approach, the ID that is generated is strongly tied to the application, in that the ID includes the application identifier. Such an ID would generally not be desirable for use in another application setting.
In general, however, when adding a new application to an existing infrastructure with ID's deployed, it is desirable to reuse those ID's.
Notes infrastructures currently have two ways of managing deployment of user ID's. In accordance with the first, an ID is generated and provided to the user in a manually secure manner, such as by a floppy disk. The ID thus provided is then used during the installation of the new client application, such as a Notes client. The floppy disk can then be carried about as a private ticket, and used at various client machine locations when desired to access the server site. In accordance with the second, the ID is generated and attached as an ID to a person record. It is there available to be detached to a file system when a client needs it.
It is an object of the invention to provide a system and method for enhancing a workflow, enterprise, and mail-enabled application server and platform to support distributed computing and remote execution of web applications.
It is a further object of the invention to provide a system and method for enhancing a workflow, enterprise and mail-enabled web application to allow distributed computing and remote execution of collaborative user community creation.
It is an object of the invention to provide an improved system and method for issuing user identifiers (IDs).
It is an object of the invention to provide a system and method for issuing user IDs which enables an administrator selectively to generate an ID, reuse a previously issued ID, or prompt a user for an ID.
It is an object of the invention to provide a system and method for a plurality of ID distribution models, including those where a user ID is available in a name and address book or on a users file system.
It is an object of the invention to provide a system and method for selective generation or lookup of ID's for a new infrastructure based upon the existence or non-existence of an infrastructure with appropriate ID's already deployed.